Fate of the Lejbzon Family of Biala Podlaska - New Information

I received a copy of this record from a cousin (not a blood relation) still living in Biala Podlaska, Poland. This is one of those important records that you know is shocking to read but you have to read it anyway. See my translation to English below the image. Out of respect for the privacy of the men who made these statements I am not listing their full names in the translation.












We the undersigned residents of the city of Bialej Podlaskiej Województwa Lubelkiego
1. Julian A., son of Mariana, living in Biala Podlaski at Garncaskiej Street No. 10
2. Antoni O., son of Karola, living in Biala Podlaski
aware of the criminal liability for providing false data affirm as follows:
The persons listed below, known to us and having lived next to us, were murdered by the Nazis in 1942. We do not remember the exact date. Near the end of 1940 they were expelled from their house on Garncaskiej Street to the Ghetto and in 1942 were taken by the Gestapo officers under strong guard of armed thugs and uniformed Nazi Gestapo to pits previously prepared by Jewish men at New Market Square. At the pits they were murdered with machine guns and by hand weapons in front of hundreds of city residents.
  1. Haja Lejbzon, daughter of Moszek, born in 1892
  2. Aron Lejbzon, son of Haja, born in 1912
  3. Idel Lejbzon, son of Haja, born in 1923
  4. Welwel Lejbzon, son of Haja, born in 1933
We note again that the above-mentioned were murdered and buried in a common grave. We were witness to the murder and backfilling.

Report No. 1638, Sixteenth day of March, 1957.
(followed by certification by notary)


Discussion and Questions:

1. See the 1939 census card for this family (click link). Haja, known as Hulke to the family, is listed as Chwalysz on the census card. She is the sister of my great-grandmother. Aron is not living at home anymore (see his census card) but Idel, aka Jehuda, and Welwel, aka Wolf, are listed. (sons Lejb and Jakow had escaped to Russia and emigrated to Israel after the war). There is a discrepancy in Welwel's date of birth. Husband/Father Szaja Wigdor is not listed above. I wonder if he was one of the Jewish men who dug the pits mentioned above. According to the census card, the family lived at Garncarska Street No. 8 from 20 April 1932 thru 20 August 1940. The move from Garncarska Street to Prosta Street is the move to the Ghetto mentioned above.
2. See the Biala Podlaska Ghetto page on the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (H.E.A.R.T.) website, the paragraphs near the map of Biala Podlaska. The notarized statements may refer to the 26 September 1942 Aktion. The Jews were gathered at the Rynek, New Market Square, for removal to Miedzyrzec. On the way, many were murdered in the Woronica Forest. If this was the case though, how could the murders have taken place "in front of hundreds of city residents" as stated above? There were smaller aktions before this date so I still don't know for sure if this is when they were killed. Having possession of this report now makes me wonder about that post-war exhumation photo on the H.E.A.R.T. website...are my family members in that pile of bodies?
3. What organization/agency was gathering these statements? Were the statements coerced in any way? How reliable are they?
4. Where are the original statements stored? Has JewishGen or JRI-Poland gotten access to them?

Other resources:
IAJGS Cemetery Project: http://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/poland/biala-podlaska-bialskopodlaskie.html

Ordering Copies of SS-5 Forms Under the SSA FOIA

Apparently the Social Security Administration put a new law in place in July 2011 to provide a level of protection against identity theft. See https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0203350005 , paragraph I. Under this new law, a complete copy of an SS-5 form will only be provided if the deceased person was born more than 100 years ago and you can provide proof of death or was born more than 120 years ago if you cannot provide proof of death. The goal here is to protect the privacy of the deceased's parents. The SSA appears to have put this law into place without even allowing for a public comment period.

I didn't know this 3 months ago when I requested a copy of the SS-5 for a grand-aunt who passed away earlier this year. I was just curious about where she was born. They did send me a copy of her SS-5 but her place of birth and parents' names were blocked out. The copy was accompanied by a letter telling me that it is not in the public interest to release this information but that they would release it if I could provide proof that her parents are deceased. I submitted an appeal 2 weeks ago but I assume now that it will be denied because my aunt was born in 1918. In my appeal I stated that I couldn't provide proof of death for her parents because I didn't know their names and, also, they would both be 110+ years old if they were still alive (not a reality for many people, especially not Eastern European immigrants born before 1900). The SSA did keep my $27 of course.

I just sent an e-mail to Ancestry.com asking that they place a clear warning in their SSDI FAQ so other researcher don't throw their money away. The information that is being blocked out on the SS-5 form is the only information on the form worth $27.

Update: the SSA denied my appeal, 1/19/2012

What Happened to Fanya Rok?

 This is a photo of Fanya Rok nee Belinki/Belinka. Her father is Isaac Belinki, brother of my great-grandmother. A cousin I connected with thanks to the JGFF had this among several other photos of the family that were taken in Eastern Europe and we're still trying to figure out what happened to a couple of these families.

Isaac Belinki, son of Avrum, was likely born in Lysyanka, Ukraine in the late 1880s or early 1890s. His siblings are as follows:
Lea/Lena born c. 1889 (my great-grandmother)
Leib born c. 1889
Rivka, birth date unknown
Tsepa, birth date unknown
Sara, born c. 1892
Shlomo, born 1895

Lea, Leib, and Shlomo all came to America, changing the surname to Belinsky. Using the ship manifests we know that the Belinki family that was still in Ukraine was living in Lysyanka in 1907 when Leib made the journey and by the time Shlomo came to America in 1913, the family was living in Talne, Ukraine. Sara married into the Avrutzki family of Talne, later moving to Odessa and later evacuated east ahead of the Nazis. She died of hunger in Uzbekistan in 1942 leaving a young daughter who survived, married, had a family and emigrated to Israel as part of the mid-1990s exodus from the fomer Soviet Union. Tsepa died in a factory fire but we don't know the details and Rivka married and lived in Shpola. The fate of her family is also unconfirmed.

Since Isaac was born circa 1890 I figure that Fanya may have been born in the 1910s-1920s so she could have married before WWII. Rok does not seem to be a common surname. We don't know her husband's given name. Nor do we know the name of her mother (wife of Isaac) or if she had any siblings.

This is the back of the photo. The English notes are my cousin's translation of the Russian here and maybe info from the mailing envelope. As you can see from the information here, the photo was mailed by Isaac from Kremenchug (now Kremenchuk), Ukraine. That's a bit of a distance from Lysyanka and Talne so we're not sure how they ended up in Kremenchug. The surname Rok is listed in A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames From the Russian Empire as being seen in Elizavetgrad (now Kirovohrad) so we're in the same region.

We also do not know when the photo was taken. I'm not good at guessing ages, especially for black and white photos. There does appear to be a fountain or sculpture in the background but I don't think it's clear enough for anyone to identify the location. It could also just be a backdrop. Fanya's clothing style is interesting.


If anyone has any information on Fanya, her father, and their families I'd appeciate hearing from you. Also if you have any comments about the photo or the translation I'd welcome those too. One small clue could help us find out what happened to them. If Isaac had survived the war it seems unlikely that he would not have contacted the family in America. Fanya may have been old enough to know the names of the American uncles and cousins so if she had survived the war I would hope she would have contacted them. Maybe not, things happen.

Finally, A Face To Go With The Story

Esther Hochfeld, age 21, died on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle Factory Fire in New York City.

Esther's mother Elke Belinki Hochfeld (originally Gauchfeld or Gokhfeld) is the sister of my great-great-grandfather Abram Belinki. While researching the Hochfeld (sometimes spelled Hochfield) family in the hopes of finding clues about my Belinki bloodline I've gotten in touch with several Hochfeld cousins. I learned the names and dates, found census records and ship manifests, photographed headstones, and picked up a few tidbits of stories along the way. I first heard about Esther about 4 years ago. Both Esther and her brother Max worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Thanks to the Cornell University online exhibit at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/ commemorating the fire I confirmed that Esther was a victim of the fire (I also have her death certificate). Max's recorded testimony of the event is part of the exhibit. According to Max, he ran down the stairs at the end of the workday not even knowing anything was wrong until he got down to the street. Esther had waited for the elevator on the 9th floor where the fire claimed most of its victims. The only reason Max & Esther were working on the 9th floor that day was because they didn't get to work as early as usual...they were up late the night before celebrating Esther's engagement.

None of us could imagine Esther's suffering. I'd stare at the photos of Triangle Factory workers posted online and wonder if she was in any of them. With the 100th anniversary of the fire this past March I was searching online for any new information. I was in touch with one of the organizers of the anniversary memorials and knew that he was trying to get a photo of Esther from Max's daughter, the keeper of the family photos. All of my searching yielded nothing. Today I googled the name "George Hochfield", Max's son, and found this: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/triangle-fire-clinging-to-scraps-of-memories/ . I'm not sure why this didn't come up in my searches earlier this year or, if it did, why I didn't notice it. George is quoted in the post, alongside a photo of Esther. Finally, a face to go with the story! The family records I've found are important but this photo means so much more. It's not that I was close to my Hochfeld cousins, I didn't even know they existed until a few years ago, but Esther stood out because of her story. It's so nice to see her beautiful face, sad too though because now I can picture her in the factory that day.

Lejbzon from Biala-Podlaska to Israel

I'm trying to locate the family of my great-grandmother's sister, Chwalysz/Hulke Lejbzon, daughter of Moshe-Hirsch Tokar and Szprinca Last. Hulke, born in Brest-Litovsk, Poland (now Brest, Belarus) c. 1891,  was married to Szaya-Wigdor Lejbzon, born in Biala Podlaska, Poland on Mar 20 1892. They had a religious marriage circa 1910-1911 but were not "legally" married until the civil registration in 1932. According to the 1939 Biala-Podlask census which I found on http://www.jri-poland.com/, they had 5 sons: Aron (Jul 17 1912), Lejb (May 25 1915), Jakow/Jankiel (Mar 14 1920), Jehuda (Jan 31 1923), and Wolf (Jun 3 1927). The 1932 marriage record does indicate that all 5 boys were born from their union which is how I know that Hulke is not a second wife.

The 1939 census records provide additional details about their whereabouts/fate during WWII. According to the census record, it was reported that Lejb and Jankiel had left Biala-Podlaska, presumably escaping into Russia, by January 1940. All evidence on the census records indicates that Szaja-Wigdor, Hulke, and the 3 other boys were still in Biala-Podlaska when Jews were evacuated to nearby Miedzyrzecz on Sept 26 1942. From there they would have been transported to Treblinka and murdered.

I know that Lejb and Jankiel survived the war. A cousin who has lived in America for many years remembers knowing their families when she was growing up in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately the families lost touch over time. Lejb took the name Leon. According to another researcher interested in the Lejbzon name in Biala-Podlaska, Leon married Maria(?) and they had 2 children, Shmuel and Sheieh. Jankiel also married (don't know his wife's name) and had 3 children, Adam, Leon, and Lena.

I don't know which spelling version of Lejbzon they adopted in Israel and unless they have a web presence in English I won't be able to find them using Google. One spelling variation is Leibson. If anyone has any knowledge of this family I would appreciate you letting me know or pointing then in my direction.

Looking Forward to Release of 1940 US Census

The 1940 US Federal Census schedules will be available to the general public (through subscription websites, no doubt) on April 2, 2012, the end of the 72 year waiting period. When the privacy laws were passed, the average lifespan was 72 years. Hence the 72 year waiting period. At present, people can only request extracts from the 1940 census showing their personal information. I'm really looking forward to the release of this census because it's the first time I'll see my dad in the census.

According to the website http://www.1940census.net/ (which appears to be related to Ancestry.com) these are the questions that were asked on the 1940 census. To me, it looks obvious that the government was very interested in the status of the labor force and also movement of large numbers of people. The population distribution was changed forever by the troubled financial times of the Great Depression. What they didn't know was that many more changes would begin in a just a few short months when the Germans began their invasion of western Europe and the US war machine cranked back to life.

  

The header of each Population Schedule reads "Department of Commerce — Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940" and includes fields for State, County, Incorporated place, Township or other division or county, Ward of city, Block Nos., Unincorporated place, Institution, Supervisor District Number (S.D. No.), Enumeration District Number (E.D. No.), date of actual enumeration, name of enumerator, and sheet number.

1. LOCATION: Street, avenue, road, etc.
2. LOCATION: House number (in cities and towns)
3. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Number of household in order of visitation
4. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Home owned (O) or rented (R)
5. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Value of home, if owned, or monthly rental, if rented
6. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Does this household live on a farm? (Yes or No)
7. NAME: Name of each person whose usual place of residence on April 1, 1940, was in this household.
8. RELATION: Relationship of this person to the head of the household, as wife, daughter, father, mother-in-law, grandson, lodger, lodger's wife, servant, hired hand, etc.
9. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Sex — Male (M), Female (F)
10. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Color or race
11. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Age at last birthday
12. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Marital status — Single (S), Married (M), Widowed (Wd), Divorced (D)
13. EDUCATION: Attended school or college any time since March 1, 1940 (Yes or No)
14. EDUCATION: Highest grade of school completed
15. PLACE OF BIRTH: If born in the United States, give State, Territory, or possession. If foreign born, give country in which birthplace was situated on January 1, 1937. Distinguish Canada-French from Canada-English and Irish Free State (Eire) from Northern Ireland.
16. CITIZENSHIP: Citizenship of the foreign born
17. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: City, town, or village having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Enter "R" for all other places
18. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: County
19. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: State (or Territory or foreign country
20. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: On a farm? (Yes or No)
21. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Was this person AT WORK for pay or profit in private or nonemergency Govt. work during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No)
22. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: If not, was he at work on, or assigned to, public EMERGENCY WORK (WPA, NYA, CCC, etc.) during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No)
23. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Was this person SEEKING WORK? (Yes or No)
24. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: If not seeking work, did he HAVE A JOB, business, etc.? (Yes or No)
25. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Indicate whether engaged in home housework (H) in school (S), unable to work (U), or other (O)
26. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Number of hours worked during week of March 24-30, 1940
27. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Duration of unemployment up to March 30, 1940 - in weeks
28. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Occupation: Trade, profession, or particular kind of work
29. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Industry: Industry of business
30. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Class of worker
31. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Number of weeks worked in 1939 (Equivalent full-time weeks)
32. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: INCOME IN 1939: Amount of money wages or salary received (including commissions)
33. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: INCOME IN 1939: Did this person receive income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary? (Yes or No)
34. Number of Farm Schedule 

Each 1940 Population Schedule has 40 numbered lines (numbered along both the left and right edges of the form). There is a list of SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS, which would be asked of those individuals recorded usually on Lines 14 and 29 (although other lines were also designated for such use and was presumably to ensure a random sampling).
The Supplementary Questions were as follows:

1. NAME  
2. PLACE OF BIRTH OF FATHER AND MOTHER: FATHER  
3. PLACE OF BIRTH OF FATHER AND MOTHER: MOTHER 
4. MOTHER TONGUE (OR NATIVE LANGUAGE): Language spoken in home in earliest childhood  
5. VETERANS: Is this person a veteran of the United States military forces; or the wife, widow, or under-18-year-old child of a veteran? If so, enter "Yes"  
6. VETERANS: If child, is veteran-father dead (Yes or No)  
7. VETERANS: War or military service  
8. SOCIAL SECURITY: Does this person have a Federal Social Security Number? (Yes or No)  
9. SOCIAL SECURITY: Were deductions for Federal Old-Age Insurance or Railroad Retirement made from this person's wages or salary in 1939? (Yes or No)  
10. SOCIAL SECURITY: If so, were deductions made from (1) all, (2) one-half or more, (3) part, but less than half, of wages or salary?  
11. USUAL OCCUPATION  
12. USUAL INDUSTRY  
13. USUAL CLASS OF WORKER
14. FOR ALL WOMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN MARRIED: Has this woman been married more than once? (Yes or No)  
15. FOR ALL WOMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN MARRIED: Age at first marriage?  
16. FOR ALL WOMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN MARRIED: Number of children ever born (Do not include stillbirths)  

Zalesie? No, Zalesie

Or maybe Zalesie?

I could go on like this for a while. There are no less than 78 towns/villages in Poland named Zalesie, which means "place beyond the woods". I don't know why this sounds so odd...here in the US we have approximately 30 states with a city/town named Greenville. The difference here is that it initially created some confusion in my research and now I have the problem that the village of Zalesie where my ancestors lived was so small I can't find any information about it. This is the first time in my research that I've had to deal with this situation.

Zalesie is located in the Lukow District of the Siedlce Province prior to WWI (Lublin Province after that) and is approx.3 miles WNW of Lukow. The village is too small for a listing in The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life but it is listed in Where Once We Walked as having a Jewish population of 36. The source of this figure is the "Black Book" or its successor the "Grey Book" which used various government censuses taken during the 1920s and 1930s. That's all of the information provided, the location of the village and its Jewish population.

Zalesie was too small to have its own town officials so registration of births, marriages, deaths, and other government business had to be done in the nearest town that did have officials, in this case Lukow. Thanks to JRI-Poland I now have family records.

I have the 1837 birth record for my 3rd great-grandfather Szymon Wolf LAST, son of Jankiel and Liba Malka LAST (maiden name not known at this time). I also have the birth records for his brothers Leybus (1848) and Boruch Josef (1851). All of these births were recorded in Lukow and the records show that the family living in Zalesie with Jankiel's occupation listed as shoemaker on two records and day-laborer on the third. In 1858, Szymon Wolf LAST, still residing in Zalesie, married Sura GRYNBERG, daughter of Ajzyk Lejb GRYNBERG and Leja AJZENBERG and a resident of Miedzyrzec Podlaski (see map...this town is located 18 ENE of Lukow). The marriage took place, and was registered, in Lukow. By the time two of their daughters were born, Mirjem Szprynca (1863, my 2nd great-grandmother) and Nojma (1867), the family was living in Miedzyrzec. I'm working on records for the GRYNBERG family in Miedzyrzec and whatever LAST records I can find. Lots more to order from the Family History Library and Polish State Archives.

This entry in the 1929 Polish Business Directory (Polish & French) shows that Zalesie had a total population of 501. The town had a gorzelnia (distillery) and mlyny (mills). There is a listing for an I. LAST, a szewcy (shoemaker). We are likely related but I'm still working on 19th century records so I don't know who he is yet or what happened to his family.

That's it...the extent of my knowledge of the village of Zalesie.











It's interesting looking back at the map above. The family seemed to be following a general eastward migration along that road #2. Marjem Szprynca (known only as Szprynca) LAST married Moshe-Hersz TOKAR sometime in the early 1880s and their first child Szymon, named for Szprynca's father which means the elder Szymon was deceased, was born in 1885. The family was either living in Terespol or Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) by that time (see east side of map). I don't have Szyprynca and Moshe-Hersz's marriage record yet but I'm feeling more hopeful that the TOKAR family lived in Poland vs Belarus (makes a huge difference in my ability to learn about the family). Szprynca died in the early 1920s and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Brest (now covered by a sports stadium). Moshe-Hersz and most of their children and their families were murdered in the Holocaust (five out of nine...one child died much earlier, two emigrated to America and Israel before the war, and that last child's name has been lost to time).

The hunt continues. I taught myself to extract data from the 19th century Polish records so I don't have to pay a translator anymore. By the late 19th century, records in this part of Poland were written in Russian and I need to see if I can learn to extract data from those too. As I come forward in time I may find family members who emigrated from Poland and whose descendants may be located....maybe. The LAST name is difficult to research because search results include "no last name" records and the GRYNBERG name is very common. The hunt is part of the thrill...good thing I don't need a gun for this type of hunting :-D